


my lover caught me off guard

by viscrael



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Dissociation, Fluff, M/M, and both him and taak r bad at physical contact, but theyre working on it, eventually, krav dissociates when touching other ppl, probably gonna write sort of a sequel to this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 08:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10532790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: Taako flinches away the first time Kravitz tries to hug him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is short and unedited af and its 1 am on a school night but! here u go ive been obsessed with taz for the past 2 weeks so it was only a matter of time before i gave in and wrote a taakitz fic......
> 
> title from drawn to the blood by sufjan stevens bc im bad at naming things

It should go without saying that not being entirely corporeal can leave one reeling sometimes.

Kravitz wasn’t always like this. In fact, for a long time he wasn’t this at all; he was living, a person, going along his normal day living his normal person life. He worked a nine-to-five job like many other living people, doing something for a living that he didn’t quite want to be doing. He’d wanted to be a composer, but that hadn’t worked out, so instead he worked at an office, doing God knows what at this point. It’s been so long since then that the details are blurred. This long in eternity, and some of the finer parts get smudged out.

Not everything, though. Kravitz remembers so much—the train for instance. The one that he took every morning to get to work; the woman he saw on the train every day who always sat a few seats away from him with her head bent over a book as they all went about their separate lives. He remembers the mountains he passed, and the rush of day to day life, and the early morning traffic and the five o’clock traffic and the hours it took to get home because of it. He remembers the morning he woke up with a pit in his stomach because something was just a little bit off—and he remembers ignoring it and shrugging on his coat and getting on the train anyway, and he remembers the way the sky looked when the train lurched forward, and he remembers the way the woman a few feet over struggled to grasp anything; and he remembers seeing in slow motion the ground that was coming towards them, and he remembers his head slamming into something so quick and so fast that he only had a split second of searing, _excruciating_ pain before everything went dark.

He remembers the pain. And the floating. And knowing that he was dead. And he remembers, clear as day, the choice he made to become the Raven Queen’s bounty hunter: the Grim Reaper himself.

Sometimes, when he’s just waking up, he’s there, floating still. His body not his body and his hands not his hands. Sometimes he can’t tell if he’s really here, in the afterlife, or if he’s in that in-between, that state right after he died as his soul struggled to find a place to go.

It might be his least favorite part of death, if he’s honest. The floating. The reeling. The waking up as not himself.

 

\--

 

When Taako is bored, he calls Kravitz.

“You busy right now?”

“Not particularly,” Kravitz says, although it’s a bit of a lie. He’s supposed to be doing paperwork, but if he does it as he talks to Taako on his stone of farspeech, Taako doesn’t have to know that. “Um, any reason you called in particular?”

“Just wanted to talk,” Taako says. There’s noise on the other line like he’s moving. Kravitz can imagine him laying sprawled out on his bunk, feet on his pillows with his chin propped up in the palm of his hand and elbows on the bedspread. Kravitz isn’t one hundred percent sure how time differences work when it’s across astral planes, but Taako’s voice has that sleep-tinted lilt to it, the kind that means he should probably be passed out right now. Taako often calls him far past when he should be awake, Kravitz knows.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep right now?” Kravitz asks. There’s more shuffling.

“Definitely not.”

“Really,” he says. There’s a hum of agreement from the other line. Kravitz fights a smile and picks his pen back up, returning to his work as he listens to Taako continue, prattling on about his day and something Merle did and Angus’s magic lesson this week and the date that he wants to take Kravitz on next time they find the time for it.

Kravitz’s pen stills.

Taako seems to notice that the small _really?_ s and _I see_ ’s that Kravitz had provided have stopped because he asks, confused, “Krav?”

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

A pause. Taako continues almost hesitantly, “There’s this place in Neverwinter I was thinkin’ we could check out next time we go somewhere.”

“Yeah, of course. It sounds like fun.”

“Hey, Kravitz?”

“Hm?”

“Did I, like…freak you out?” Taako asks, voice uncharacteristically sober. “With the talk about another date and shit?”

“What?” Kravitz’s pen falls from his hand and rolls halfway down his desk. He fumbles clumsily for it, the stone in his other hand as he rushes to get out, “No—no, of course not! Taako, what made you think that?”

“You went all quiet when I started talkin’ about another date.”

“Oh.” Kravitz blinks. “Oh, yes, I can see how that would make you think I was, um…” Pen now acquired, he sets it down carefully on the desk somewhere so it won’t roll away. He leans back in his chair, sighing quietly. “No, sorry, I’m just…a bit spacey right now, I guess. It doesn’t have to do with the date. I’d actually, um—like that a lot, if we could go on another.”

Taako’s voice brightens at his assurance. “Fuckin’ sweet! ‘Cause, not that I don’t like talking to you and all, but it’s just not the same as getting to see you, ya know?”

“I know what you mean. It’s…I’ve missed you.”

There’s a pause. For a second, Kravitz thinks he’s overstepped a boundary or made Taako uncomfortable with this uncharacteristic show of—affection? If that’s what he could call it?—but Taako responds with that soft voice, “You too, Krav. When are you free?”

They hesitantly plan another date—hesitantly, because there’s a high chance on both ends that their schedules won’t quite align because of something sudden coming up, and they’ll have to take a rain check. Long-distance dating is always difficult, but oddly enough, they’re both more than willing to make this work.

Kravitz has been interested in mortals before, but not for anything…like this. It’s never been dates and farspeech calls and _I’ve missed you's_ ; only a relationship for the moment, brief, casual companionship that Kravitz can wash off in the morning, can scrub away and out of his life before returning to work as a reaper. He finds that he doesn’t want to do that with Taako. That might be the scariest part of this whole thing.

 

\--

 

Taako flinches away the first time Kravitz tries to hug him.

It’s weird. Kravitz isn’t quite sure what to do with it, what he’s supposed to react with in that situation. He fumbles over his tongue for what feels like forever before managing to get out, “I—I’m so sorry, I should have asked, I didn’t mean to overstep any—“

“It’s totally fine,” Taako waves it off, flicking his wrist as if to physically get rid of the situation. He already looks back to normal as if he hadn’t just jumped out of his skin trying to get away from Kravitz. At this point, they’ve been going on dates and talking whenever they have the chance for months now, and yet neither of them has even tried to make a move. Why that is, Kravitz doesn’t entirely understand; he knows why _he_ wasn’t going for physical contact—it made the reeling so much worse, sometimes, and it was difficult to balance the two—but Taako has seemed…like he’s interested in that. Maybe it’s just his flirtatious nature that made Kravitz think he was interested, but he hadn’t expected to be pushed away the first time he went for a _hug_.

“I overreacted for a second there, don’t worry about it,” Taako says, sounding genuinely apologetic. He seems to try to make up for it by reaching for Kravitz’s forearm. That’s one of the things that he does quite often, and it’s what Kravitz is used to at this point; it doesn’t make him float out of himself. But he can’t help but feel a little hurt that Taako pushed him away without explanation.

When Kravitz would have those casual relationships, it was less for enjoyment and more as—almost self-harm. That term feels weird in regards to himself when he rolls it around in his head, but that’s the only way he can explain it. Touching other people, particularly mortals, makes him so much more aware that he _isn’t_ a mortal—this his body is only semi-corporeal, that this form could and has ceased to exist just by thinking that he wants it gone. It’s the electricity, the way that corporeal forms feel in contrast to the semi, and when he dives in head first—as he used to with those brief relationships—it’s overwhelming. The only way to deal with it is to detach.

But with Taako, he doesn’t _want_ to detach. Like everything else involving Taako, he doesn’t want it to be the same as every other relationship he’s had. He wants things slow and he wants those excessive farspeech calls and he wants those _I missed you's_ and maybe something else and he wants to touch Taako and know that he, Kravitz, is _there_ and _present_ and _real_. He doesn’t want to detach. He doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t want to.

That night, when Kravitz is in Taako’s dorm after dropping him off, Taako slides his arm down from Kravitz’s forearm slowly, until he reaches Kravitz’s hand. He takes it in his gingerly, and Kravitz represses a shiver at the feeling of another person touching him. It’s not overwhelming. It’s only a little different than the arm holding—but it’s enough that, even in this semi-real body, he feels the back of his neck flush.

He squeezes Taako’s hand gently. Taako squeezes back before letting go.

“See you around, Krav.” Taako smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> prob gonna write a sequel type thing that involves like. talking abt Why taak flinched + involving them cuddling (!!) bc im horrible and love them


End file.
